Learning Agency Matchmaking Event: Agency Profiles
2020 Learning Agency
Matchmaking Event
This year’s APPAM conference offers an innovative matchmaking session where Federal agencies and researchers can dialogue in a “speed networking” event highlighting priority learning questions across the Federal government. This is a unique opportunity for researchers and Federal agencies to form connections that could lead to partnerships on high-priority, policy-relevant research.
To help researchers select which agencies they'd like to meet with, we've provided a profile on each participating agency for you below. The profiles include the participating agency name, bureau/sub-agency/division where applicable, and 3-5 priority research questions from their learning agendas.
Deadline to register: 10/23
Please note: No promises of financial award are implied by Federal agencies and discussions between researchers and Federal agencies do not imply official endorsement by the Federal government. Please do not try to sell vendor-specific products; this event is for informational exchange only.
Participating Federal Agencies
Federal Agency Profiles
Each agency or sub-agency was asked to provide 3-5 priority questions from their learning agendas that a) they have limited capacity to answer them at this time, and (b) a partnership with external researchers has the potential to meaningfully build the evidence base.
Administration for Children and Families
Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- How do individual programs and approaches move TANF recipients and other low-income individuals into jobs and help them retain employment?
- Who are the children and families served by Head Start and Early Head Start and how are they faring? What services are provided by Head Start and Early Head Start programs? What is the quality of those services and how do they support improved outcomes for children and families?
- What is the evidence of effectiveness of specific programs or services (e.g., mental health, substance abuse prevention and treatment, and in-home parent skill-based programs and services; kinship navigator programs) in the domains of child safety, child permanency, child well-being and/or adult well-being?
- What are effective approaches to supporting professional development and other needs of the child care workforce?
Website for Learning Objectives
Corporation for National and Community Service
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- How are civic engagement behaviors associated with social, economic, and health outcomes?
- How does volunteering behavior develop as part of human development?
- What are the most effective evidence-based practices for increasing the capacity of nonprofit organizations?
Website for Learning Objectives
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Program Analysis and Evaluation / Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- How are stakeholders using critical infrastructure products and services they receive from CISA? How can CISA improve partnerships with critical infrastructure owners and operators and compliance with voluntary standards and guidelines?
- How does CISA shape the role of the federal cyber risk administrator and tie CISA's service delivery and governance actions to the government-wide risk management cycle under FISMA to ensure agencies meet a baseline standard of cybersecurity performance and are able to conduct consistent and transparent long-term resource planning and justification? How do we assess and quantify the notion of buying down cybersecurity risk?
- What strategic engagement approaches with stakeholders are most effective to coordinate and collaborate to develop shared community-wide strategies and build resiliency in the National Critical Functions (NCFs)? What approaches have had the greatest impact on increasing resiliency within the NCFs?
- How effective has emergency communication been in creating, maintaining and deploying a qualified group of people to fulfill key emergency communications roles in each state, locality, tribe or territory to improve incident outcome?
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Office of Planning and Performance Management
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What indicators, measures, methods, and data can better support the evaluation of the Homeland Security Grants Program (HGSP) effectiveness as it pertains to maintaining and improving State, local, Tribal and territorial (SLTT) and national preparedness?
- What are the most effective ways to measure social return on investment related to prepared and resilient individuals and communities?
- As a Nation, how prepared are we to face the threats, hazards and risks of greatest concern?
- Can the US Fire Administration re-design its programs to further reduce the annual fire deaths per million citizens to offset the recent trends of higher fire fatality and decreasing effectiveness in fire prevention.
FEMA Supplemental Information
Small Business Administration
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- How can the SBA best support small business growth in markets in socially and economically disadvantaged communities?
- What are the small business outcomes and impacts of receiving training, counseling, and technical assistance, and how do they vary by market segment?
- Were businesses that received an EIDL or PPP loan more likely to have survived and/or achieved revenue, profit, or sales parity more quickly post-pandemic than those businesses that did not?
- What support do businesses in underserved markets need to successfully survive or recover [from the pandemic] compared to non-underserved businesses?
- How does the SBA’s disaster assistance infrastructure contribute to post-disaster individual, business, and community rebuilding?
U.S. Agency for International Development
Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning's Office of Learning, Evaluation and Research
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What is the spectrum of trajectories countries follow toward self-reliance? What determines these trajectories? What are the implications for how we best support countries following a given trajectory toward self-reliance?
- How can activity design, delivery, and procurement approaches (including through diversifying USAID’s partner base) most effectively integrate considerations of gender and women’s empowerment and youth, faith, and other often marginalized groups, and to what extent does that support self-reliance?
- How can local voices, priorities, and contributions be integrated into how USAID fosters self-reliance? How can USAID engage with local actors and communities who are not partnering with USAID but share our goals?
- What are the positive and negative unintended outcomes of our programming and partnerships on local systems, communities, and actors? How have marginalized or underrepresented groups (e.g., women, LGBTQ people, youth, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, etc.) been affected?
- How can USAID support internal culture change that aligns staff mindsets and behaviors with USAID’s Policy Framework?
Website for Learning Objectives
USAID Learning Agenda Fact Sheet
USAID Learning Agenda Sub-Questions
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Foreign Agricultural Services
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What long-term impacts do school meal programs have on local agriculture markets, employment, and infrastructure development, given the potential for a sustained and predictable demand?
- How do educational outcomes linked to school meal interventions among preschool children compare with the impacts among primary school aged children? What factors affect any differences in outcomes?
- What are the impacts of interventions related to cash crops on improving nutrition security and altering producers’ tendency to grow subsistence crops? What actions can be taken to combine market goals with nutrition goals in order to ensure nutritional security while expanding and improving markets? Given that nutritional decisions are frequently made within the household, what role do gender and family structure play in improving nutrition?
- What is each agricultural actor’s greatest vulnerability to climate risks? What are the best models for agricultural actors to protect their livelihoods against these risks?
- How can improved transportation and post-harvest facilities such as cold storage, roads, etc., help in value creation to expand trade and markets?
Website for Learning Objectives (Food for Progress)
Foreign Agricultural Services Evaluation Plan (Food for Progress)
Website for Learning Objectives (McGovern-Dole)
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Rural Development
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What are the short-term and long-term economic and social impacts of RD programs, including indirect/spillover effects?
- What can be done to expand RD program access to better reach communities in need?
- How can we more effectively leverage RD investments to catalyze other investments from other government or private sector sources?
U.S. Department of Education
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What policies, programs, and practices are most effective in communicating school choice information to parents?
- What policies, programs, and practices are most effective in improving important student outcomes among participants in adult education programs?
- What policies, programs, and practices related to work-based learning are most effective in supporting important outcomes for program participants?
- How are educators prepared and supported to implement high-quality career and technical education (CTE) programs?
- Are federal tax credits for postsecondary education effective in supporting important outcomes for postsecondary students?
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What policies, programs, and practices are most effective in supporting homeownership opportunities for creditworthy borrowers, while safeguarding American taxpayers and modernizing our housing finance system?
- What policies, programs, and practices are most effective in preventing homelessness and ensuring that experiences with homelessness are brief and non-recurring?
- What policies, programs, and practices could enhance and reform HUD’s rental assistance programs, including protecting the health of occupants from lead-based paint and other hazards in housing?
- What barriers exist to the development of affordable housing and what incentives can help reduce those barriers?
- How can HUD best support effectiveness and accountability in long-term disaster recovery, facilitating housing, infrastructure, and economic recovery while ensuring investments mitigate against future disasters and create resilient communities?
U.S. Department of the Interior
Office of Planning and Performance Management
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- The Great American Outdoor Act helps restore facilities on national lands and addresses the long-standing backlog of deferred maintenance across the Department, among other legislative requirements. This supports maintaining critical DOI infrastructure and facilities to ensure effective operations and service delivery as a strategic goal for the Department. This research addresses the effectiveness of DOI programs, processes, and systems in assessing, managing, and ultimately reducing the deferred maintenance backlog and sustaining the infrastructure and facilities portfolio in an appropriate condition.
- Executive Order 13771, Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs, directed agencies to manage the costs associated with the governmental imposition of private expenditures required to comply with Federal regulations. The DOI is reviewing its regulations and administrative processes to determine what cost savings, to the government and to the public, are possible by repealing regulations for which the perceived benefits might not be justified relative to their implementation costs, and which administrative processes could be streamlined or made more efficient. The research addresses to what extent are DOI programs to streamline and collaborate on National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) compliance efforts effective in achieving desired results? What are the factors that impact NEPA compliance efforts related to the unified regional structure adopted across the DOI which focuses on the intersecting issues within the same geographical boundaries?
- As the steward and manager of much of America’s natural resources (oil, gas, coal, minerals, and renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower), the Department’s energy strategy facilitates development of all energy resources and makes our nation stronger by decreasing dependency on other nations. Given the various energy market structures in the U.S. with pricing data originating from multiple sources, what are the best factors to consider in establishing an operating fee structure that garners a fair return for offshore renewable energy generation? How are coastal states developing their renewable energy targets and how are those targets likely to change over the next decade?
Website for Learning Objectives
U.S. Department of Labor
Office of Disability Employment Policy
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What is the path an employed individual may take after a work-related or non-work-related illness or injury leading to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits?
- Is the current framework for measuring cost/impact of disability comprehensive and adequate?
- Are the six questions that measure disability adopted by most widely used surveys such as CPS, ACS etc accurately capture disability as it is perceived by today's population?
- What are some of the gaps in understanding issues pertaining to youth transitioning from secondary to post secondary education and/or employment?
U.S. Department of Treasury
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- How can financial education be integrated into K-12 classroom curricula and have a positive impact?
- How can employers have a positive impact on their employees’ emergency savings?
- Where are the opportunities to use Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robotic Process Automation in HR?
- What emerging or collaborative technologies best support a reduced footprint environment?
- How can agencies better leverage internal planning and accountability processes (strategic planning, annual or operational planning, data driven reviews) to improve how agencies allocate resources?
U.S. Department of Treasury Learning Agenda
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What process improvements can be implemented to move toward becoming a more modern, risk-informed regulator?
- Do the NRC’s performance indicators align with being a more modern, risk-informed regulator and are they providing meaningful outcomes?
- Are NRC’s workforce planning processes adequately accommodating potential workload fluctuations?
- Are licensing action reviews performed by the NRC becoming less resource intensive over time without any appreciable reduction in quality?
U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Budget and Performance
Priority Questions from the Agency's Learning Objectives
- What is the impact of work-life programs/wellness on Federal hiring and retention?
- To what extent are current Federal compensation packages/systems (pay, benefits) effective in attracting, retaining and supporting performance of the workforce now and for the future? Would adopting and promoting ‘total compensation packages’ better attract, retain and support performance of the Federal workforce better than current Federal compensation/benefits packages?
- How can OPM use available data and identify new data sources and methodologies to improve merit system accountability?
- What are the advantages/disadvantages of a defined benefit versus a defined contribution plan, or blended retirement benefits?
U.S. Office of Personnel Management Learning Agenda